Inspired by the majestic elephant, type designer Manjunatha R has created a new font, Bandipura for Kannada. This resident of Mysuru district’s T Narasipura, has made letters that have similarity to the attributes of elephants as its thickness is irregular and the edges are sharp.

Since the Bandipura reserve forest is well-known for elephants, he chose it as the name for the font.

Talking to the New Indian Express, the designer said: "Being a graphic designer, I have customised existing fonts to make logos, headlines and others. But I thought I should make my own font that looked different and big. Immediately, the elephant came to my mind. If you observe the Bandipura font, each letter has uneven, sharp curves like that of an elephant’s trunk, tusks, small eyes etc.”

Desiring to create a font which looked different from others, Manjunatha, a keen observer, looked all round for inspiration. He was also keen that the font could be used in big size and supported all languages.

Working hard for nearly two years, he finally created the font and released it on Sankranti. “As Bandipura is in Unicode, all letters are available. It supports 125 languages, including Latin and Swahili. I have also used Halegannada (old Kannada) in some of the letters,” he told the media.

The font supports all devices, and following installing software, it can also be on mobile phones.

Elaborating on his journey in designing the font, he disclosed that it was not the sketching the font that was tough but developing and programming was. Still not accessible on Google, one can upload it from the designer’s website for free (https://aksharatypestudio.in/fonts/ bandipura)

This 34-year-old designer from the age of 10 started drawing Kannada letters and this continued in school days too. Later he started his type foundry Akshara Type Studio.